Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (16106)	3/22/2000 2:07:00 PM
From: Brian P.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The choice is not between "crowded ugly central cities" and leafy idyllic suburbs where everyone is happy. (Go see "American Beauty.") The car culture is one of the reasons cities are so unattractive at the present time. Less dependence on cars with their dispersing alienating effect (trains concentrate cities, towns and communities at rail heads and foster community and defined spaces and a sense of place) would beautify city and country, town and suburb. If you don't have this vision and a certain aesthetic sense I do about this then we're talking past each other. Oh well, it's happened before.

To: DMaA who wrote (16106)	3/22/2000 2:07:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Speculators built suburbs to profit from converting cheap agricultural and wood land into profitable residential land. Customers were lured by low taxes and "better" schools. The schools were better because the kids were from families that had the wherewithal and the get up and go to get away from central cities that were filling up with poor rural and foreign immigrants. High local central city taxation drove the middle class out to the suburbs where the residents didn't have to face the problems of crime, welfare, and dependency. Democracy, greed, free choice and free markets in action.

To: DMaA who wrote (16106)	3/23/2000 4:51:00 PM
From: Brian P.	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 769667

Land-consumptive sprawl vs. close-by communities: <<Like to go back to the days when grand rail systems laced the nation? Want to reinstate the Big Red Cars, the railroads, the web of street-cars and buses, the many modes of movement crippled by preferential treatment given to the car? Can you go home again? Back to the days when book-toting schoolchildren and package-laden parents had mobility without automobility? Can we resurrect and reinforce mass transit? [There is] a fact of human movement that has defined the success (or lack thereof) of public transportation in America: the fact that an average rider will walk no more than eight to ten minutes to his or her transit stop. This truism of transportation and humanity means that collecting enough riders to fill the trolley or bus depends on collecting passengers who live nearby. It means shaping surroundings close or coaxing people to walk or bicycle. Land consumptive sprawl spreads people. It supports only the land-consuming private car. Conversely, more close-by communities bring more people closer to transit, hence more riders.....Land use is the issue. >>[1] . __________________________ [1] Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take it Back (New York: Random House, 1997), pp. 303-4